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Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hystereo
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Hystereo

Author: Maurice Baudin

Illustrator: Dan Adkins

Release date: March 30, 2024 [eBook #73296]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company,

1961

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HYSTEREO

***
 HYSTEREO

By MAURICE BAUDIN

Illustrated by ADKINS

A quiet concert in the evening by the lake ...

a harmless hi-fi hobbyist ... yet why did Woodard
tremble at the sound, sound, sound.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Amazing Stories November 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Daytimes, Woodard wasted little speech on the other guests at the
summer hotel. Biddies and garrulous men—fools one and all, he told
himself. They had come to be with nature, they said; but the clear,
deep lake with its rocks and pointed firs, and the mountains beyond
were merely a backdrop for their inane gabble. They had come for
health and renewal, clucking of the ravages of city life. Yet scarcely a
one but had acquired some absurd malady. They had turned the
small hotel into a hospital for twitches and bor-borygms. As if,
because they were paying their way, they must give the climate work
to do. As if, thought Woodard, they were hiring the warm sunlight,
the cool, sweet air, to mend their palsies, tachycardias, facial tics or
rheumatic twinges.
Relishing the fact of being resented and the illusion of being sought
after, he kept himself to himself.
But this sort of thing must not be carried too far. Directly after dinner,
for fifteen minutes before his evening walk, he mingled with the rest
as graciously as their recollections of the day's snubs permitted. He
had settled upon this course early in the summer. Circulating, at the
breakup of the dinner hour, among as many guests as time allowed,
he fell in benignly with all topics, however foolish.
On the last of these fence-mending tours, he tuned in to elderly Mrs.
Jenson. "But why," she was asking plaintively, "has poor Mr. Ward's
body not risen?"
What a conversational god-send, that presumed drowning! The old
girl had stopped circulating romantic rumors about himself. She had
relegated her newly developed lumbago to second place. Woodard
smiled inwardly. Of course, several times in the past three weeks he
had heard her question answered. So, if she listened, had she. How
sensible of himself to budget his day's quota of chitchat. Glancing at
his watch, he saw that he had two minutes left, enough time for a
terse review.
"The lake is very deep in parts, and there the cold would prevent the
gas from forming that would raise the body...."
Mrs. Jenson fidgeted. It was one thing to repeat a question; must
one listen while someone else repeated the answer? "But no clothes
were found, Mr. Woodard!" As he flinched at her corruption of his
name, she whimpered: "On the entire shore of this big, big lake—not
a stitch of clothing!"
Woodard nodded sympathetically. "Possibly he rushed from the hotel
in a state of undress. Was he a frolicsome type?"
"He was a lovely gentleman," she said coldly.
"Ah. Possibly the lake didn't know that." His fifteen minutes were up.
He nodded curtly.
But just then, Mr. Nodus joined them. Nodus, who dined at the hotel,
was summering noisily with his hi-fi apparatus in a cottage far down
the lake. Every guest in the place had spent at least one evening
there, hearing the most incredible sound effects music can offer.
Every guest, that is, except Woodard. He had known for weeks that
the man would invite him. He had known with equal certainty that he
would decline. How often, feeling himself watched, had he glanced
toward the table where Nodus ate with his two silent house guests?
Each time he had met the impassive stare of the large baby face,
had stared coolly an instant, had looked away. And now Nodus had
the effrontery to grasp his arm.
"Interested in swimming, Woodard?" he said loudly. "Me too!
Swimming and music. Well! You're invited to a concert. Works out
tonight's the night I can fit you in. You can follow us in your car—
about five minutes?"
"Oh but Mr.—Donus, is it?—-Nodus? I'm not—not...." Woodard saw
Mrs. Jenson's lips curve in a hateful smile. He lost his nerve.
Panicking, he fumbled for words. Fumbling, he was lost.
"Five minutes," Nodus repeated.
Mrs. Jenson sighed spitefully. "Mr. Woodard doesn't know what he
has in store!"

Scarcely glancing to his right at the lake that lay calm in the hazy
twilight, Woodard drove behind Nodus and company. Hi-fi indeed!
Torturous device of a science-ridden culture—how had he let himself
in for the evening ahead? Why had he permitted this trespass upon
his privacy? But when, after some eight miles, the convertible ahead
slowed and signalled for a left, he checked the impulse to keep going
on around the lake and back to the hotel. Nodus would think him
crazy. He would think it aloud in the dining room—ostensibly to the
deferential genies, the man and woman who were vacationing with
him; but he would think it in a voice that carried.
Woodard pulled up beside the other car in the fir-fringed clearing.
Nodus stood waiting with his two shadows. "Russ will take you to the
studio," he said briskly. "The girl and I will be along in a minute." He
chuckled, his eyes scanning Woodard's face. "No neighbors here to
raise a fuss. No knocking—no kicks or squawks...."
Only from me, Woodard thought, following the leader to a two-car
garage some distance from the cottage. Inside, Russ slid shut the
door, then flipped a switch that lighted half a dozen table lamps of
the beaded fringe variety. Woodard stared in amazement. Heavily
carpeted with scatter rugs, the place was walled and ceilinged with
fiber-board. On three walls, including the door side, were stuck triple
rows of ornamental covers from long-playing records. Running the
length of the fourth wall, left of the entrance, a counter rose waist-
high, its side hung solid with more record covers. On the left end of
this counter was an elaborate system of dialled boxes which
Woodard summed up vaguely as player, amplifiers, filters, and so
on; on the right, eight open wood boxes of records. On the center of
that wall was a large clock with a sweep second hand. Directly
beneath, an empty rack of record cover size, beside which a neatly
printed sign read "NOW PLAYING".
"Quite amazing," Woodard remarked truthfully. "Well...." He dropped
into the center of three chairs right-angling the dial boxes. "Might as
well sit."
But Russ, who had been smiling dreamily, was suddenly agitated.
He shook his head. He opened and shut his mouth like a fish. As
Woodard felt his poise threatened, the door slid open. Nodus
entered, preceding Miss—Miss—But her name hadn't ever been
mentioned.
Seeing where Woodard sat, he frowned. "No, no," he said. "That
won't do. You'll be better off...."
Woodard repeated, "I'm utterly amazed by all this."
Nodus' expression softened. "It's a garage, as you can see. Four
hours at the start of the summer to convert it to a sound-room. Three
and a half hours, at the end, to reconvert it. On the nose in both
instances. Half-hour discrepancy there. We're working on that."
Woodard understood that "we" included the pair, whose life currents
evidently flowed from the master's battery.
"Job's all broken down," said Nodus. "I do certain things, Russ does
certain things. The girl"—She bridled as he jerked an elbow toward
her.—"does her little chores."
The girl! Would she see fifty again? But Woodard felt himself wanting
to placate, a sensation both new and unpleasant. "The details must
be very interesting," he said weakly.
Nodus' face had gone stern again. "—won't do," he back-tracked
curtly. "You'll be better off over there." He indicated a lone chair
directly opposite the "NOW PLAYING" sign. "Acoustically speaking,
the most effective location in the studio." Clinical and considered, his
tone brooked no protest. Woodard stumbled embarrassedly to the
chair. "You can see," Nodus stated, "if you look down, all the chalk
marks where we've experimented with positions."
And Woodard did see: dozens of white marks on the rug around the
chair legs, close together as if fractions of an inch were vital.

As Nodus moved to the dial boxes, Russ and the girl dropped like
wraiths into chairs: she nearest Woodard, he in the middle, leaving
the place by the apparatus for Nodus. Woodard thought: God, but he
has this worked out! He's a tyrant, a baby-faced ogre. And these two
goops are in bondage to him.
It came to him that Nodus was curiously untanned for a devotee of
swimming.
"What do you weigh, Woodard?"
"Why——oh——one-sixty, I guess...."
Nodus nodded. "Near enough." He selected a record from the box
nearest him. "People always like a few effects before the concert,"
he said. "Preliminaries." His expert hand pressed a switch and
turned some dials. The room was filled with a rasping hum. Now
Woodard saw what he hadn't noticed before: in the far corner, back
of the counter, an unlighted cavernous area; and in its center, black-
draped like an oracle of doom, the speaker system.
Russ and the girl looked dismayed even before Nodus snapped,
"Oh-oh! Something's not right! Russ—go outside and check the
grounding." He pulled Russ to him and whispered. Russ nodded and
slipped quietly out.
I could still go, Woodard thought. The hell with any stories he'd
spread. I'd.... But the girl was staring at him, serene and knowing as
if she read thoughts.
The rasp ceased and the room went still. After a few minutes, Russ
entered and took his seat by the girl.
Now Nodus assumed a pedagogical stance, a platform manner.
"This," he said, holding the player arm poised above the whirling
record, "is the Victoria Falls—Zambesi River—taken at 78 r.p.m.,
which I still consider the ideal speed. Perfect studio conditions not
possible, of course, though the engineer was extremely
cooperative." Nodus smiled benignly. "He tried to get rid of the
insects. They almost got rid of him. You'll notice a treble hum in the
foreground. Giant mosquitoes. Then I'll play it again, filtering out the
falls—we can do that—and you'll hear the mosquitoes as if they
were primary."
Woodard tried to look intelligently appreciative.
"This will take four and one-half minutes. Precisely. You can check
this statement against the clock. The record is longer, but I find that
people stop concentrating after four and one-half minutes."
The room filled with the massive roar of a giant river dropping four
hundred feet. Woodard clutched the arm of his chair, rejecting the
nightmare fantasy of himself taking the falls in a canoe. Nodus too
was seated now. Looking impassively straight ahead, like a
ceremonial figure on a public stage, he was talking from the side of
his mouth to Russ. He played with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses
which Woodard had never seen him wear. The girl sat raptly beating
a time of her own devising.
It was said—where did one hear these things? Why did one
remember them?—that years ago the girl and Mr. Nodus had been in
love. That the new era in electronics had alienated Mr. Nodus'
affections. Auxiliary priestess now to the monster that had dethroned
her, the girl tapped her left wrist with the fingers of her right hand and
smiled remotely....
"Four and one-half minutes, as advertised," Nodus said, raising the
player arm. "And now, the foreground of mosquitoes. Amplified by—
well, no need to be technical. Let's just enjoy it. Two and one-half
minutes will do."
Quite so. Higher than coloratura, a whirring, a hum. As if all insect
life brought out on the lake by the evening damp had swarmed into
that room. And back of the keening shrillness, unending in its
behemoth anguish was the muffled roar of the falls. Woodard
squirmed. But he wouldn't pay Nodus the homage of warding off the
insects. Forcing himself rigid, he watched the clock. His thoughts
wandered to the lake, dark and deep outside—and to Mr. Ward,
imprisoned by cold in the darkest depth.
Two and one-half minutes exactly.

"Amazing," Woodard said. Antagonized by Nodus' pontifical

assurance, he added spitefully, "Of course, nothing sounds like that."
Nodus shrugged aside the irrelevancy. "Hi-fi does," he said,
extracting a second record from its case. "We have many requests
for that number. Many. And now—an old-fashioned steam train. If
you think it's coming toward you—and jump—please try not to
displace your chair." About to laugh, Woodard caught himself. The
man was not joking. "We don't," Nodus explained, "want to fasten it
to the floor till we're perfectly certain that...." He looked for
confirmation to Russ and the girl. Both nodded. "We've timed this
one at three and one-half—more precisely," he announced, "three
minutes and twenty-eight seconds."

It was stupendous, terrifying. Woodard himself vibrated as the

colossus approached. But not for anything would he have stirred....
Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds it was, Nodus monologuing
from behind his hand to Russ, the girl beating a new time.
In the shattering silence, Woodard laughed tremulously. "This must
be the next thing to shock therapy."
The girl tensed. Russ looked wary.
"What makes you say that?" Nodus demanded.
"Why—I just meant...." Woodard was unnerved. He rarely minded
giving offense, but he liked to know when and how he was doing it. "I
suppose," he placated, "that atomic fission is more what I had in
mind...."
Nodus looked at him suspiciously. "There are worse things than
atoms," he said. The girl cackled, then looked blankly about as if she
hadn't done it. Nodus ignored her. "Not a family man, are you,
Woodard?"
"No." Woodard took in Nodus' quick nod. Had the admission
somehow worsened his situation?
"No one to care?" cried the girl, her dark eyes gleaming archly. "No
one to miss you?"
She was stilled by a flicker of Nodus' eye.
On with the effects. "Now this," Nodus lectured, handling the new
record tenderly, "has more surface noise than I consider excusable. I
keep it in my library only because...."
He glared at Woodard, who had been unobtrusively removing his
jacket and now dropped it hastily to the floor. "That won't do there!"
The girl roused and floated over, picked up the offending garment
and carried it with abstracted solicitude to a hook by the door.
"—than I consider excusable. I keep it in my library only because the
engineer, a really cooperative fellow, learned some very important
principles of underwater reproduction from taping these underseas
mating calls."
Woodard repressed a smile as the girl, back in her seat, doubled
over in silent laughter. Nodus threw her a disciplinary look. "Like to
sit in that chair yourself?" he muttered, indicating Woodard's place.
Instantly she sobered.
Now what does that mean? Woodard asked himself.
"Nine and one-half minutes will be right for this."
Fantastic that it could be recorded at all, Woodard had to admit,
listening incredulously to the beeps and crackles, the yips and
squeals and tiny shrieks. Undersea, Nodus had said. Was the lake
across the road a similar hotbed of solicitation? Did Mr. Ward's chill
presence cast no damper on concupiscence?
Woodard pantomimed astonishment with a wondering nod.
"Now with this one," Nodus recited, "I say nothing. Just mention that
it lasts seven seconds. Watch the clock."
Woodard counted seconds so intently that he didn't interpret the four
very loud preliminary gasps from the speaker. Suddenly, magnified a
hundred times but undistorted, crystal clear and shattering, nearly
blowing him off his chair: a monumental sneeze.
His heart stopped, then pounded achingly. He looked furiously at the
speaker. It should have been wetly splattered all over the place, but
it rested amorphous and unshaken in its dark covering.
"And," said Nodus, "that could have been magnified a thousand
times—not in this enclosure—without distortion. An epochal
recording." Deftly he switched records, turned a knob or two. "Now
here—an old-timer, a real old 78. And if I can find the right groove, a
most interesting effect." Leaning over, he whispered something to
Russ, who smiled. "I defy anybody to recognize...."
Woodard braced himself to interrupt. "I'd like to be excused for just a
minute," he begged nervously, rising. "Have you—do you happen to
have...." He fished for words and came up, hating himself, with "Do
you have a little boys' room?"
"Can't you wait?"
"Well, I just thought...." Woodard licked his lips. If the next effect
were anything like that sneeze, he feared the consequences of
delay.
The girl nodded apprehensively at Nodus. "It's the great outdoors,"
he said grudgingly. As Woodard fumbled with the door, he added
very distinctly, "We'll be waiting."

Under the half-moon and the million stars, down the drive and across
the road the lake lay darkly glowing. In the cool silence Woodard
heard it lapping its shores like the licking of lips. What did happen to
Ward? he thought suddenly.
And then he thought, Why don't I—but his keys were in his jacket
and his jacket was inside. Now he noticed that Nodus' car had been
shifted to stand behind his own. Escape was cut off in any case. He
felt a throbbing hollowness, the ache of terror. "I'm being foolish," he
said. "I'm going to cut it out." The sound of a human voice, even his
own, was oddly reassuring. He would stay just enough longer not to
give offense. He would try to make only pleasing responses to
Nodus' recital, would act reverential in this shrine to the electronic
screech. And when he left, he would point out with the most casual
little laugh of well-feigned surprise that his car was cut off—as if it
were natural but at the same time comic....
When the garage door stuck, he pulled frantically. After a moment,
Nodus opened it from inside. The girl said shrilly "You got locked in
the bathroom!" and then shook noiselessly.
"You've interrupted the sequence," Nodus stated. "I'm starting with
the last two minutes of the mating calls, then running the sneeze
again."
Woodard nodded contritely. The mating calls heard once, it turned
out, were heard for all time. But the sneeze, braced for it though he
was, retained its power to shake the inner being.
"—defy anybody to recognize this sound," challenged Nodus.
It sent a cold tickling vibration through Woodard, from the soles of
his feet to his frontal sinus. When it was over (four and one-half
seconds), he needed almost a minute to bring his shuddering to a
halt. He saw Russ take a pad and pencil from his pocket. He did not
react.
"A laugh," Nodus gloated. "A human laugh. More precisely, a
chuckle. When Marcella Sembrich produced it originally, in her
recording of 'Coming Thro' the Rye', the intent was probably coy,
but...."
In his sharp, sudden rage, Woodard forgot tact and caution. "That's
so unfair to a singer! To take her voice in one passage and distort it
—that doesn't show what she can do!"
"Could do," Nodus corrected coldly. "But it shows what the
equipment can do."
"I would never," Woodard began acidly.... A persistent tickle in his
throat was making him cough. His post-nasal drip, he recognized
grimly.
Nodus glanced at Russ, who was jotting notes. "A few more little
effects," he promised, "then the concert."
Woodard nodded, coughing viscously into his handkerchief.
"Now just to give you some further idea...." Nodus looked reproving.
"You have a very annoying cough."
"It dries up for weeks," Woodard apologized, "and then...."
"I suggest you control it." Nodus turned to the player. "—some further
idea, and no surprises this time, a factory whistle." He chuckled. "No
timing. I keep this going till I see the whites of your eyes."
Woodard was sweating copiously before Nodus turned it off. He
looked envyingly at the girl. Not enjoying the most effective acoustic
location, she had sat through the outrage in a state of catatonic
beatitude. "Incredible!" he gasped, coughing again.

And now, in the last lap of the preliminaries, effects came thick and
fast. Woodard's sensibilities were still jangled from a rattling,
polysyllabic belch (panicking the girl, but unjustifiable otherwise as
either art or science) when a powerful soprano, tweetered until it
could cut steel, emitted a blood-curdling "Good-bye fo-re-ver!" Tosti
rendered by Medea; and as Woodard tried to formulate some idea
about unseemliness, he was shaken to his bowels by the agonized
shriek of a subway rounding a curve. Next, "Tires Screeching on Hot
Asphalt"—not a surrealist poem, and anyway Woodard's critical
faculties were pretty well blasted. Then a dentist's drill. Woodard
struggled to make sense of Nodus' remarks about a gum cavity and
a midget microphone. Finally, perhaps most devastating of all
because it suggested evil in bright sunlight, the tender brooded over
by the sinister—the excited yelps of girls at play; the bouncing of a
ball and the rush of feet across a wood floor; a shrill, drawn-out
whistle and the voice of a gym instructress screaming "That's
enough, girls!" (The Pepsi-Cola Ladies' Basketball Team: eleven and
one-half seconds.)
Woodard peered uncertainly from trauma to learn that the concert
proper was at hand.
"I run through a few things, parts of things, interesting sections,"
Nodus lectured, playing idly with his glasses. "A little program most
people seem to like...."
Time was, Woodard would have snapped "I happen not to be most
people." But his pulse was pounding, his eyes watering. Racked with
coughing, trembling with post-sonic shakes, he could scarcely be
called himself. So he tried to nod appreciatively. If he could identify
more, really participate—then he might overcome the sensation of
being one with three against him. And his sinus might stop dripping.
"The violin," Nodus announced, for the first time placing a record
cover on the "NOW PLAYING" rack. "Some unaccompanied Bach
partitas."
Woodard laughed hoarsely. "It's been my theory...." He coughed.
"Yes." Nodus held the player arm poised. "Now we'll have
nineteen...."
Woodard struggled for recovery. "It's been my theory," he croaked,
"that Yehudi makes them up as he goes along."
Russ stared for a moment, then went on writing.
"Do I understand," Nodus asked with cold hatred, "that you refuse to
listen to a few unaccompanied Bach partitas?"
Woodard grovelled. The privilege of hearing partitas on this
superlative equipment? Refuse? Oh most certainly not—He
collapsed in a fit of coughing.
Mollified, Nodus said "I'll wait till you pull yourself together.
Meanwhile, you may like to know that of the records my dealer
sends me—and he knows my taste, mind you—I keep one in eight.
And that one I exchange, on the average, three times before I find a
copy I can admit...."
Woodard wanted desperately to concentrate. Here was something
solid to work on. Did Nodus keep one record in eleven, or one in
twenty-four? It depended, of course, on whether x equalled 8 plus 3
or 8 times 3. Surely one should be able—but he was straining
beyond his limit. It was as if some mental spine, which in a past
existence had sustained him, were numbed or missing.
Nodus was staring. So, with an odd, expectant smile, was the girl. To
show that his wits had never left him, Woodard blurted out, "The
composer never intended the music to sound like this!"
"Like what?"
"The partitas were all wrong!" Now his voice kept breaking. "A
composer—and a performer—should have some say—not be fed
into equipment like this and—and...." Another paroxysm prevented
his concluding: "and used to start sinuses running."
"I haven't played the partitas yet, Woodard."
That stopped the cough. Not played them? Then why did he feel—
He found himself thinking with curious gentleness of the guests at
the hotel who mocked nature with their complaints. And vast as his
sudden pity was for them, it was vaster still for himself. But he tried
to latch onto one worthwhile thought: I have nothing to fear but fear
itself.
"Nineteen and a half minutes." Relentlessly Nodus lowered the arm.

Woodard tried clinging to the worthwhile thought. But it kept

shimmering off in the dissolving world. It wouldn't come right. I have
nothing to fear but all mankind, he kept hearing.
And maybe it was better that way; at least he knew.
Finally he asked himself: How did I get into this? I who always kept
myself to myself to myself to myself.... Oh he was whirling, whirling,
and no one could count his r's p.m. ... myself to myself to....
He slumped unconscious in his chair.
Eleven minutes and thirty-one seconds of partitas had elapsed.
Nodus so remarked to Russ, who made note.
And the concert continued. But there is small point in detailing
Nodus' accounts, as sensibly delivered as before, of the various
selections: how he explained his choice of "Bendermeer's Stream"
as a follow-up to the partitas; his apologies for the surface scratches
that made the Valkyries' ride sound unlubricated; his cautionings
about what to look for in the "Romeo and Juliet Overture"; his
meticulous timing of these and the other recordings.
Thirty-six minutes and twenty seconds after Woodard's cerebral
disintegration came his impalpabilization.
"Three hours, forty-one minutes, twenty-one seconds," Nodus
intoned, and Russ jotted down the melancholy figures. The girl
emitted a small shriek of joy and started impetuously for the chair
that had been Woodard's. But Nodus raised a preventive arm. "Not
yet," he warned. "Not for a few minutes. There may be anarchic
sonic residuum. We don't know. And anyway—what's there to see
this time? Absolutely nothing left."
"Except his car," said Russ. He spoke with a lisping dreaminess.
"You'll park it by one of the fishing piers. Woodard said as he left
here that he'd stop for a late swim."
"Just lovely," sighed the girl. And Russ nodded in slow motion.
Nodus smiled almost reluctantly. Perfectionist that he was, it would
be long before he was wholly satisfied. He turned to the girl. "Your
idea of substituting the partitas for the Mahler 'Farewell' was very
sound. I'm interested in the reasoning."
Her nostrils flaring at the heady draught of his praise, she giggled
shyly. "I hoped the partitas would work, because Mahler really
fractures me. That 'Farewell' would have finished me—even where I
was sitting."
His glance rested on her as if he would bear this in mind. Then he
said "It should be safe to look closely now," and he led his
technicians to the vacant chair.
"No nasty mess to clean up!" raved the girl. "Nothing like that Ward,
with his dreadful post-distillation residuum!" And as Nodus and Russ
exchanged smiles at her woman's viewpoint—"Who's next?" she
demanded.
Russ was inspired. "That frightful old woman at the hotel!"
Nodus regarded the girl through narrowed eyes. "The one's been
spreading those half-wit tales about you and me."
She did not meet his look. "You'd never get Mrs. Jenson here alone."